Chapter 8 - The Fall of the House of Vance
Within seventy-two hours, the fallout from Chloe’s staged wedding reached every corner of high society and the international financial press.
What Eleanor Vance had spent forty years building—her carefully cultivated image of old-money refinement—was completely dismantled in broad daylight.
The footage of Chloe stuffing her own diamond ring into her Chanel bag was leaked to every major news outlet and social media platform. By Monday morning, the clip had accumulated over eighty million views worldwide. The hashtag **#SearchTheParasite** was trending globally, but this time, the internet wasn't mocking the pregnant woman in the torn dress—they were universally condemning the vicious, greedy family that had tried to frame her.
The Prescott family, owners of the real estate empire Chloe had tried to marry into, issued a scorching, public statement:
> *“The Prescott family unequivocally condemns the fraudulent and criminal conduct displayed by Chloe Vance and Eleanor Vance. All familial, personal, and financial ties with the Vance family have been permanently terminated. Legal counsel has been instructed to pursue full damages for reputational harm and fraud.”*
Julian Prescott didn't stop there. He sued Chloe for the total cost of the wedding—over four hundred thousand dollars—and filed formal criminal complaints for the fraudulent insurance claim on his family’s heirloom diamond.
Meanwhile, Eleanor Vance’s legal nightmare deepened.
Because I was eight months pregnant at the time of the assault, the district attorney upgraded the charges against her to felony reckless endangerment and third-degree assault on a vulnerable individual.
When Eleanor’s private defense attorney attempted to secure her release on bail, the judge took one look at her criminal history, her complete lack of remorse during her arraignment, and the mountain of 4K video evidence showing her deliberately tearing my gown.
Bail was set at two million dollars in cash.
A sum that Eleanor Vance, whose personal bank accounts had been frozen pending the forensic audit of Daniel’s liquidated firm, could not possibly pay.
For the first time in her pampered, arrogant life, Eleanor was forced to trade her couture Chanel suits for an orange polyester jumpsuit. Her manicured nails broke on the stainless-steel sinks of the county detention center, and the women she had spent decades sneering at from the windows of her luxury towncar were now her cellmates.
As for Daniel, his descent was swift and total.
The Securities and Exchange Commission opened a formal inquiry into Apex Capital within forty-eight hours of my father’s loan acceleration. The forensic auditors discovered that Daniel had been shuffling client funds between offshore accounts to cover his mother’s personal credit card debts and Chloe’s lavish lifestyle.
He wasn't just broke—he was facing federal wire fraud charges.
His three-million-dollar penthouse was seized by the federal marshals. His sports cars were towed from the underground garage and auctioned off on the courthouse steps. His former friends, the high-rolling investors who had toasted him at charity galas, blocked his number and crossed the street whenever they saw him coming.
Stripped of his money, his status, and the wife whose quiet protection had kept him afloat, Daniel moved into a run-down, twenty-dollar-a-night motel on the industrial outskirts of New Jersey.
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He spent his days sitting on a cracked vinyl chair, staring at his phone, watching the news coverage of the Sterling family empire, realizing with every passing second that the paradise he had thrown away for his mother’s toxic pride was never coming back.
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